


give them one more reason now

by lifeonthemurderscene (NotAllThoseWhoWander)



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:56:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4265757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/lifeonthemurderscene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kind of a High School AU, kind of a ghost story, and kind of a not-love story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	give them one more reason now

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: this work contains triggers for strong language, homophobia (and homophobic slurs) and graphic depictions of self-harm. there's nothing too bad in the first chapter, and i'll put trigger warnings above chapters with more triggering content. 
> 
> other than that, i hope you guys dig this fic—don't hesitate to comment, kudos, etc. if you're so inclined!

**Chapter One**

* * *

 

_you're not in this alone_

_let me break this awkward silence_

* * *

 

Ray calls on Sunday night, late enough that Frank’s mom is kind of pissed in a tough-love way, but she lets him take the landline into his bedroom anyways.

“It’s her fault that we had to move, you know?” Frank gripes, locking the door, and then immediately feels fucking terrible, because his mom is, like, the best mom in the world and works really hard and it’s not her fault that they had to move and that Frank had to leave his old school and his best friend and his job at the local record store.

“Just know that your classmates there are gonna suck way more than your classmates at Sacred Heart ever did,” Ray jokes. “And they probably all listen to shitty music, anyway.”

Frank laughs down the line, but he suddenly feels empty. His new bedroom is small and still totally unfamiliar—they’ve only been in the new apartment since Friday, and it’s been a busy weekend—and the walls are too white and too blank. The Iero's house in Trenton hadn't been spacious, and Frank's mom had sometimes referred to it not-so-affectionately as a dump, but Frank's bedroom was big enough for all his stuff and he'd covered the walls in posters of punk bands and skateboarders, and it hadn't been great but it had been familiar—it had been  _home_. Frank never thought that he would actually miss Trenton. He's kind of never thought that anyone on God's green earth would miss Trenton. But he does—he really,  _really_ does. 

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promises. “And I’m gonna take the train back and visit as soon as I can.”

“You better,” Ray says. Frank can hear the quiet loneliness in his voice already. “And buy a cellphone, dude.”

It’s been a few months since Frank accidentally left his Motorola flip phone on a bus in downtown Trenton, and he hasn’t saved enough money to warrant buying another—also, he hadn’t needed to, because Ray lived a ten-minute bike ride away and they saw each other every morning on the school bus, anyways. Now, he guesses, he better scrounge enough cash for a cheap phone, because Ray is an hour long train ride and what feels like a thousand miles away, and Frank is already lonely as hell.

“Fuck,” he mutters, listening to dead air down the phoneline. The new apartment smells weird and musty, like someone else has been living there before Frank and his mom moved in on Friday evening.  _Ghosts, maybe_ , Frank thinks grimly, and grabs a towel in preparation for figuring out how the new shower works. 

 

_____________

  
Our Lady of Sorrows doesn’t use a school bus system and his mom’s new office is a twenty minute drive in the opposite direction, so Frank’s stuck walking the ten-odd blocks to campus. It’s an opportunity to see more of the new neighborhood, he figures, but as Frank starts walking he realizes pretty quickly that it looks a lot like his old neighborhood—mostly apartments or duplexes and one-story houses, kids' bikes leaning against houses and rusty cars parked in driveways. 

When he passes a house with a basketball hoop above the garage door and improvised skateboarding ramp in the driveway, Frank starts to wonder how many teenagers live nearby, and if any of them go to Our Lady of Sorrows, and if they’re cool. Then he thinks about Ray and feels empty.

A few blocks from school, the houses and apartments fade into stores and parking lots and strip malls; Frank stops at the first convenience store that he passes, a 7-11, because the temptation of coffee is overwhelming. There’s a teenage boy wearing an Our Lady of Sorrows uniform—a navy blue blazer, white shirt and black pants, the same constricting and vaguely unflattering thing that Frank pulled on this morning—pouring coffee from the self-serve machine at the back of the store. Frank considers trying to strike up a conversation, but as he draws closer he realizes that the boy is wearing headphones, listening to music so loudly that Frank can hear tinny drums and bass filtering through.

By the time he buys his coffee, the other boy has already paid and left. Frank walks the few remaining blocks to Our Lady of Sorrows alone, ditching his styrofoam cup in the trashcan just outside the school’s brick edifice.

Other students are thronging around the open doors, talking and laughing and jostling each other—friends meeting up against for the first time after summer vacation. In a panicky rush, the realization that he’s going to be the New Kid from every horrible after-school special hits him, and Frank feels a hot wave of nausea. He inhales and exhales a few times, thinks about how he started his first day of freshman year as a friendless loser and ended it with Ray Toro’s phone number scrawled on his arm in sharpie and plans for a Friday-night sleepover and horror movie marathon, and ducks through the front doors.

____________

In the Admissions office, a secretary mispronounces Frank’s last name as Lero and gives him a copy of his schedule. He’s registered for mostly junior year requirements—U.S. History, Calculus, Honors Literature. And gym. And—

“Um, I think there’s a mistake.” Frank turns the sheet of paper, gestures to a blocked-off period. “I didn’t register for Art.”

“It’s a state requirement, sweetie.” The secretary lowers her glasses a little. “Most of our students get their art elective out of the way freshman and sophomore year, but since you’re new you’re going to have to start now.”

“Is there anything else I can take?” Frank hears the desperate edge to his own voice and is embarrassed. “Like, I don’t know, Home Ec?”

“Cooking isn’t art.”

“I—” Frank sighs. “Okay.” He kind of knows it’s pointless arguing, but he’s _so bad_ at art. He took an art class once during the summer, at the local teen center, because they were free and his mom told him that if he took a class to “better himself”, she’d help him buy a new amp. And he’d sucked. Like, so much. Frank’s okay with words sometimes—he writes really emo poetry in an spiral notebook that he keeps at the back of his bookshelf—and way better with a guitar, but he’s no good at art.

It’s a moot point though, apparently, so he just smiles and says thank you and goes to first period History.

  
_________

Being the New Kid is hard. Like, Frank didn’t think that it would be easy, but he figured that if he kept his head down, he’d be fine—like the way that he was really quiet on the first day of freshman year and he and Ray still found each other.

Nobody, like, throws spitballs or chewed gum at him, and none of his teachers make him stand up in front of the class and introduce himself, but nobody says hey or sit next to me or what’s your name? either. Everyone just ignores him—except for the guys who call him a fag in the hallway outside the cafeteria and the girl who snidely asks him if he’s had the same haircut since fourth grade. Ray gives him shit about his hair, too, because it sticks up in the back and sometimes his bangs fall over his eyes in the front, but that’s okay because it’s Ray, and Ray could probably make fun of Frank’s mom and it would be cool. He wouldn’t, though, because he’s Ray and he’s the best thing that’s happened to Frank and nobody at Our Lady of Sorrows will ever compare to the untouchable awesome that’s Ray Toro.

Art is last period, and it’s in the basement. Frank’s expecting a dim, depressing classroom, but he’s surprised to find that the space is full of light and lurid color and looks like a real art studio—there are windows high up on the walls, at what must be ground level, and the afternoon sunlight is falling in dusty shafts across the paint-streaked linoleum tile, and there’s art tacked up on all of the walls, and Frank feels weirdly comfortable. Easy, he thinks. That’s it. Easy.

The teacher is a younger guy in a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt, which is pretty awesome. He wears a white lab coat stained with paint and ink and when he gestures Frank thinks that he sees tattoo ink under the edge of the sleeve. His name is Mr. Schechter.

“I would tell you to call me Brian, but the administration isn’t really into that.” He hands out a sheaf of syllabi. “But if we run into each other at the supermarket, or the local bar—I’m kidding, don’t drink, you’re all hopefully underage—you can call me whatever you want.”

Frank thinks this guy is the coolest teacher I’ve ever had and then I’m so glad there’s not a nun teaching this class. There had been some secular teachers at Sacred Heart, but none had ever taught Frank’s classes. He’s starting to feel like he’d been missing out until now.

The period passes way too quickly—they don’t even do any actual art, just read through the syllabus and talk about supplies and where everything goes and about not “accidentally” stealing stuff or taking it home without asking—and Frank doesn’t have to talk to anyone or make awkward introductions or small talk.

While he’s walking, Frank sees the boy from the 7-11 again. He’s walking slowly, head down, nodding to the beat of unheard music. Frank thinks about tapping him on the shoulder and asking what he’s listening to—the guy’s hair is messy in a careless-on-purpose kind of way that makes Frank suspect that he maybe likes cool music—but he figures that it’s probably pointless.

Everyone already has friends, Frank thinks. The sunlight is splintering and the afternoon is warm; it still mostly feels like summer. He thinks about walking home from the bus stop with Ray and how they used to walk out of the way just to spend more time with each other, and suddenly he feels empty and sick all over again.

__________

The first week kind of falls into the same pattern—wake up, walk to school, zone out during class, walk home, play guitar, procrastinate doing homework. Things like _call Ray_ and _lie to mom about making new friends_ fall somewhere on the list, too, but Frank feels distracted and empty and he doesn’t have the energy to work up intricate lies about new friends that he doesn’t have. Calling Ray is a godsend, because even when Frank’s too tired to dick around and make bad jokes or talk about guitars they wish they could afford, he and Ray just sit in silence, the nice kind of phone-silence, and everything feels almost okay in Frank’s book.

On Wednesday, Mr. Schechter gives the art class their first assignment—Where I Come From, a painting or drawing or mixed-media piece that’s supposed to convey them. Frank ends up sketching out a weird mess of stuff—a map of North Jersey, a train ticket back home, a radio and his favorite CDs, a photograph of him and his mom. It’s a rough sketch, but it looks really bad. Like, Frank knows that he isn’t a great artist by any means, but this is fantastically shitty. Other students are planning together, showing each other their sketches. Embarrassed, Frank shoves his into the bottom of his backpack as soon as the bell rings.

Mr. Schechter tells the class that they can use the art room after hours, provided that they respect the materials and don’t screw things up too badly— _don’t get me fired_ , he warns—so Frank plans to spend Friday afternoon working on his assignment in peace. He figures that nobody else is going to be hanging around after class on a Friday, and he’s right. It’s maybe kind of depressing, because the few kids in the class that Frank is friendly with give him weird looks as they pack up and leave. Frank smiles and waves and nobody else notices or asks him why he’s lingering in the basement like a freak while everyone else is going out with their friends.

The thing is, Frank’s classmates aren’t actively mean, with the exception of a few guys in his gym class who won’t stop giving him shit about his hair and fingernail polish and inability to succeed at anything involving athletics. They don’t go out of their way to, like, hang out with him, and nobody has tried to initiate a conversation beyond small talk, but the kids at Our Lady of Sorrows seem pretty nice. A few girls in his Honors Literature class have insinuated that the next time there’s a really insane party, they’ll tell Frank about it—that’s something to look forward to, at least.

He buckles down at about three-fifteen, putting in headphones and turning up Legacy of Brutality on his iPod. The classroom feels almost cavernous, cathedral-like in its emptiness. Frank’s pretty absorbed in his work until he sits back to take a breather and relax his right hand (what the fuck, nobody told him that drawing would make his muscles cramp up) and realizes that the second sketch looks pretty much like the first one.

“This fucking sucks,” Frank mutters, taking out one earphone and throwing it onto the plastic table. He fights the urge to toss a pencil across the room.

“Hey, it’s not that bad,” someone says, very close to Frank’s right ear, and he levitates about a yard off his chair for a second, almost yelping in fear. “If you clean up those eraser lines, you’d have a better idea of what it’ll look like done.”

“Holy shit,” Frank gasps, turning. A boy in a uniform shirt and pants is standing behind him, holding a sketchbook and pen. He’s taller than Frank, so pale he’s verging on pallid, and his shoes are untied. The filthy laces are trailing on the floor.

“Sorry,” Frank manages. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“You were rocking out pretty hard,” the guy says, sitting down at the end of the table, across from Frank. He opens the sketchbook and flips through it.

“Yeah,” Frank mutters. He scrubs most of the thinner, lighter lines off the page, but what he’s left with looks jagged and half-assed. “It’s like something is missing,” he says, mostly to himself. Out of the corner of his eye, Frank sees his neighbor glance up.

“What’s the assignment?”

“Um. It’s, like, where we come from. Not literally. More, like…”

“Abstract?”

“That’s it.” Frank shrugs. “I fucking suck at art, though. I can’t draw worth shit.”

“It’s not about drawing well, though.” The boy taps his pencil against the edge of the table. “It’s about drawing something that you give a fuck about.”

There’s a kind of quiet intensity behind his words that gives Frank pause. He’s never really thought about it like that—like, say, playing guitar. He always plays best when it’s a loud, fast punk song. Green Day or Black Flag, chords he cares about because he feels the lyrics to those songs like they’re fire in his veins.

“Yeah,” he says, and is surprised by the conviction in his own voice. “Yeah, okay. That makes sense.”

The guy has already turned back to his sketchbook, is drawing something with a steady and careful hand, but he sort of smiles when Frank says that.

Frank glances at the guy’s face, the curve of his cheek and his greasy black hair and his furrowed eyebrows, and wonders why he hasn’t seen him around the halls or cafeteria. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person that Frank would easily forget—not with that haircut or dye job (it’s almost chin-length, dyed a hard jet-black). He looks pretty cool, like the kind of guy Frank could maybe get along with.

“Maybe I should just draw something else,” Frank says, raising his voice a little. “Something that I care about.”

“Maybe,” the guy says, not looking up. He’s quiet for a moment, and Frank thinks that he’s totally distracted until he says, “What’s your, like, passion?”

“Guitar,” Frank says, immediately. “I play guitar.” He bites the end of a pencil, and then thinks about how many other people have probably done the same thing and swipes his sleeve across his mouth. “Shit, I should totally draw myself playing guitar.”

“There you go.” The boy says.

“I—yeah.” Frank takes another sheet of paper from his sketchbook. “Thanks.” He dicks around for a few minutes, trying to reason out how to draw himself realistically (what do hands even look like on a guitar neck?) before he asks, “What’s your name?”

The boy looks up. “Gerard,” he says. “My name is Gerard.”

“I’m Frank.”

Their gazes snag and hold. It’s Frank who looks away first, suddenly very conscious of the movements of his facial muscles.

“I haven’t seen you around campus,” Gerard says quietly. His voice is kind of high, a familiar North Jersey accent hardening his vowels. It’s a really nice voice, Frank thinks. “Are you new?”

“Yeah.” Frank’s barely concentrating on his sketching. “We just moved here from Trenton.”

“That’s a shitty way to start the school year. New kid on the block.”

“No kidding,” Frank sighs, maybe a little overdramatic. “Junior year, too.”

“Rough,” Gerard says. “Junior year kind of sucks. No offense.”

“None taken.” Frank squints, holding his hands up in a facsimile of what how he usually holds his electric guitar. Gerard watches him twist his hands around for a few minutes, the right corner of his mouth tugging into a half-smile. Then he says,

“Sometimes it’s easier to look at a photograph, you know.”

Frank drops his hands. “Yeah.”

“Or a mirror.”

“Yeah.”

“When I first started drawing, I traced everything.” Gerard leans in a little. “Like, I would just trace Marvel comics all weekend, until I was good enough to draw my own stuff. And then it was just all practice. Makes perfect, or whatever. I mean, I don’t think that it does, I think that it just kind of cements whatever you’re already able to do, but it definitely can...I don’t know,” he concludes, almost like he’s embarrassed. “I usually don’t talk this much.”

Frank lets out a laugh that’s supposed to be cool and understanding, but ends up high and awkward. He feels his cheeks heat in a blush and hates it.

“It’s just,” Gerard continues, not looking at Frank. “I don’t know. People don’t usually listen for this long.”

“I understand,” Frank says, with conviction, and really means it.  



End file.
